


razor smiles and tired eyes

by andhera



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, M/M, grad student!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 09:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10186139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andhera/pseuds/andhera
Summary: kei and tadashi start the morning before a long day of grading papers and writing disserations.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: this is really shitty wip drabble that is going to be a part of a larger grad student au im working on slowly. i hope you guys like it please let me know if you think i should continue

tadashi's skin is sallow as he wakes up, dry with crusts over his eyes and from standing in the shower for an hour a time while painfully hot water strikes his skin as he stares into space, trying to decompress from days that seem endless. 

sunlight is barely seeping through the craws in blinds of their bedroom window. his stomach is growling painfully after another night of skipping dinner in order to stay at his desk into the deep of the night, surrounded by books and books and his own stifling ideals that he just can’t seem to keep penned down. 

luckily kei is a heavy sleeper, so even if the sunlight is try8ing to usher them into the morning of a new day, he stays blissfully unaware and continues to keep sleeping, turning over to his side and uttering a barely intelligible grown before passing out again into the peace realm of unconsciousness that tadashi could just never seem to enter, even if he wanted to. 

(tadashi’s been awake since 3 AM, staring at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling that have been there since both of them were in middle school, too fearful of the nightmares of failure that he always seemed to had as the time he spent working on his thesis dragged on and also too jittery from downing more that 3 cups of coffee in the hopes that it would help him stay up later.)

if he is being honest, neither of them can really afford to be sleeping; there's always too much work to be doing, more reading that needs to be done or papers that need grading before the week begins and their advisors start to hound them again about they were yet again behind on. 

(this was a problem more for tadashi than kei, who is freakishly precise and hardly leaves his advisors wanting for anything, be it leading undergraduate workshops that they tell him about last minute or producing stunning data collections, well organized and always to their favor.)  
but he’ll always be a softie for kei, and he knows that he'll grant him these five minutes of sleep because no one else looks quite as beautiful as kei does when he’s sleeping, ruffled blond hair sticking out every which way and long golden lashes catching scattered rays of sunlight in a rare moment when his eyes don’t have wrinkles of stress and his mouth doesn’t have its characteristic tight frown lines surrounding them. 

he’s also craving for solitude to continue for a little bit longer, just so that he has enough time to light as cigarette after pulling his sweatpants back on. he slips out of bed, already missing the warmth of a kei’s arms from when he was lying next to him, but he still makes is way to the shitty back porch that the landlord has claimed she'll renovate for more than a hundred times and pulls out his pack of menthol L&Ms so he can squat and exhale his stress into the peaceful morning. 

the sky is gracefully changing from dark gray as streaks of magenta sunlight peak out from the horizon, and their neighborhood is still silent as most of the college kids who live here aren’t awake at 7 AM, especially after a Friday night of rancorous partying, so tadashi enjoys the quiet while scrolling through his phone and taking a sip from his shitty coffee. 

no amount of hazelnut creamer could make up fro the bitter taste that stays in his mouth, and he remembers to berate tsukki for buying this shitty american coffee again after he’s gotten used to the smoother taste of indian coffee powder that he buys from time to time from their neighborhood desi grocery store. 

kei will know he’s kidding as he always does, as he knows that tadashi could never say a word against him because he still idolizes him, starstruck to this day by the ease with which his best friend glides through the hardest of circumstances without so much as bursting a sweat or shedding a tear.

tadashi longs for kei’s kind of poise in the face of all him embarrassment and failure, but knowing that’s an impossible wish, he settles for being accepted into the same school as kei, the good luck that he’s never understood but is always grateful for, that has allowed them to move out and live together after graduation from high school. 

they haven’t been apart for four years, they spend holidays together because it’s always too expensive to fly back home, settled on the couch in blankets together with mugs of hot chocolate while tadashi falls asleep and kei settles for watching star trek reruns on silent and choosing not to notice that tadashi’s drooling all over his bony shoulder. 

he hears shuffling behind him and he knows that kei’s followed him outside. he smiles because sometimes it feels like kei does not care about him at all but tadashi has to remember that he chose to spend the rest of his life with him and the blanket that he finds wrapped around his thin shoulders was proof enough for him that kei did indeed care for him dearly. 

“it’s early,” kei grumbles, and tadashi can’t help but to laugh. 

“yeah and how many chapters of your dissertation do you have left to write?” tadashi shoots back and kei elbows him playfully in response. 

“we don’t have any eggs or bread for breakfast,” and kei’s back to business, cataloging, analzying, and overall trying to make sense of the makeshift life the both of them are struggling to cobble together out of almost nothing. 

“would it be wrong to eat ramen for breakfast?” tadashi asks, half seriously, and kei steals the cigarette from him and takes a long drag before tadashi can even protest. 

he seems to be considering tadashi’s question quite seriously, and he leans back from where he’s sitting on the porch so that his arms are brushing tadashi’s back gently. 

he exhales smoke and responds, “if our mom’s were here they would kill both of us, yamaguchi,” and he puts the cigarette out on the cement and stands up. 

tadashi reaches his arm out and kei instinctively reaches out to pull him up to his feet as well. 

“i’ll go get us some croissants from that bodega you like, that ok?” and tadashi’s heart stops beating for a second. he takes in the weight of all of this, all of them together, and for a second he can’t breathe even though kei is just staring at him, wondering why he’s being stupid. 

“i-uh, sorry. yeah, that’s fine with me, thanks tsukki!” 

tsukki still looks at him weird, but he doesn’t say anything more. tadashi squacks when kei pats his butt unexpectedly, and he tries to close the front door on him in retaliation. they wrestle, tadashi laughs and kei mostly grunts and tries to shove him aside. 

they end up packed into a corner right before the kitchen when kei walks them back into the house. tsukishima looms over him and tadashi’s breath hitches again. they’re both panting and tadashi can feel the rise and fall of kei’s chest pressed up against his skin. 

they look into each other's’ eyes for what feels like centuries. yamaguchi’s breath fans out and tickles kei’s nose, and tadashi laughs at the way his nose wrinkles in discomfort.

there’s no magical moment, just tadashi leaning in because he knows that kei would never make the first move. he pulls on kei’s collar while he stiffens up and his nails scrape against the skin that’s revealed above kei’s collarbones. 

tadashi places a kiss at the corner of kei’s mouth first, trying very hard not to scare him too much. he hears a small exhale of surprise and he takes it as a sign to move in closer. 

he presses his chapped lips against tsukishima’s drier ones. there’s no spark, no romance, and nothing like the BL novels that he used to consume voraciously under the covers in the middle of the night when he was a high school student longing for a relationship. 

kei’s hands come to tadashi’s hips like he’s needs to hold on in order to survive, and tadashi wants to test him more, so he threads a hand through his hair and pulls him even closer to their mouths are pressed impossibly closer together. 

kei gets bolder and after gripping onto tadashi’s hips equal fervor, he bites tadashi’s bottom lip and when he exhales pain mixed with desire, kei presses his tongue into tadashi’s mouth before he can even process what’s happening. 

this isn’t their first kiss either. 

that was years ago, on the night of their graduation, after coming back from a volleyball team party and crashing in kei’s room, quietly so as to not wake his parents. 

now, they know each other better. tadashi knows that when kei pulls away his complexion will be completely flushed, since he’s always been an easy blusher, and even at 25, spontaneous affection can still catch him completely off guard. 

his hair is mussed, and tadashi leans back in to wraps his arms around kei and push his chest directly against his own. kei doesn’t know what do with his arms at first, so he just awkwardly puts them on tadashi’s hips again and finally wraps them around him again, exactly the way he knows that tadashi likes to be held when he’s feeling really sensitive. 

“thank you for doing all of this with me,” tadashi whispers, and kei can feel the beginning of tears wetting the cloth on his shoulder. 

kei exhales with him in tandem, the sound of his heart reverberating through tadashi’s chest in the same rhythm. 

“tadashi,” kei whispers reverently, too scared to speak loudly in fear of ruining what had become a moment between the two of them, “i wouldn’t want it to be with anyone except for you,”

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know what you think!  
> you can find me at tumblr @gothdesi or twitter @softestduria


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